The Problem of Aragorn

[yovargas]

It's been years since I read the book, but I've seen the movies a zillion times. Within the film's context, Aragorn makes perfect sense - so much of the story is about the corrupting effects of power that it would almost be odd if he wasn't reluctant to take it. As has often been said, the best ruler is often the one who doesn't want to rule.

[axordil]

V-man:

Indeed, one could almost say the weight of all of Tolkien's unpublished work rested on Aragorn's shoulders as he completed LOTR. At the time it seems clear that JRRT thought that was as much of the Great Tales as would ever be seen in public.

Prim--

I think that's what people are looking for: realism. They're just looking in the wrong place.

Precisely. He is defined not by who he is, or even what he does, but by what he MUST do, what he is called to do. That's not mimesis, but romance. And it is quite important that he continues to fail upwards, as it were. The nature of the pagan hero is to succeed until failure. The nature of the Christian hero is to persevere until success. To touch on two tales JRRT knew as well as anyone of our time: contrast Beowulf with Gawain and the Green Knight.

[axordil]

BTW--

I'm not deliberately ignoring movie-centric posts, but I pretty much used the comparison between film and book Aragorn as a means to get into the question of the nature of Aragorn's character and function (not in that order )in the books, so that's where I'm concentrating right now in this thread.

Unless I get distracted.

[truehobbit]

I think these roles are far more realistic than the expectations some readers apparently have of this 'growth' thing - I must say that I find the concept of 'growth' a completely articifial one, and one that may be found in novel heroes (particularly in novels that try to be clever), but not in real people.

I'm sorry to digress from the point of the thread but why is that? Do real people not grow? I would like to think that I'm at least a little more capable and smarter than I used to be. There are roles now that I would not have been able to fill a few years ago. I don't mean coming to grand realizations or relevations, but unless I misunderstand you, fulfilling different roles is often not the same as changing.

Mossy, I'm not sure I understand you (in fact, on first reading I overlooked the last 'not' and thought I agreed with you, but now I'm not sure whether you are saying it's not the same or whether you think that's what I'm saying...)
Anyway, what I mean is that I would say that fulfilling different roles often *is* growing, and then we can say that Aragorn's taking on of different roles *is* growing, too.
From the differentiation between the two that has been made in this discussion, however, I took it that they are seen as different things. Somehow, 'growth' seems to be bigger - don't ask me what it is, because I've never seen it.

But real people do usually grow and change—naturally with time and maturity, and more so if they do anything interesting or dangerous. And books tend to be written about people who do interesting or dangerous things.

Well, maybe I've just never seen it. I think it's possible for a person to change in some decisive way under exceptional circumstances, but I certainly don't believe that people *usually* grow and change, not in the way that people seem to expect from Aragorn.
Real people are a complex things, not characters that develop from point A to point B, and I think there is enough nuance in Tolkien's creation of the character, and if some development jumps at you the way it does in the movie, then that's because the character was simplified into a point A to point B thing.

I think that's what people are looking for: realism. They're just looking in the wrong place.

Except that that's the opposite of what I was trying to say.
I find LOTR immensely realistic, which I should have named as one of the things that make it meaningful to me in Voronwë's thread. Realistic in the sense that there are no utopias, no ideologies, no false hopes in there.
And also in the sense that his characters do what is humanly possible, i.e. use the gifts and characteristics they have instead of turning into something they've never been as the situation demands in the space of a couple of months.

ETA: Voronwë, I thought that was a very insightful post. (And, no, I hadn't heard all that before. )
But I'd like to ask one thing - this has been mentioned here and there till way back on TORC, I think, but I've never got round to asking - you said:
the archetypal King-in-waiting,
From the top of my head, I can't think of any other 'kings-in-waiting' - what comparative characters are there?

[Primula Baggins]

hobby, I suspect that we're talking about different definitions of "growth and change." I mean the quite ordinary and common and real character development that occurs to everyone between the teens and old age. Over that time most people gain confidence, become more patient, develop the ability to understand other people better, become able to defer their own gratification until they've achieved something important. Someone in real life who stays forever at the early end of that progression has serious difficulties. And I've never met anyone in real life who started at the late end. (This may be some people's problem with Elves and Aragorn, by the way; they're very old and we meet them at the late end.)

In realistic fiction (which I don't write, by the way), plot has to grow out of character to a large extent, because there really isn't anywhere else it can come from; nobody's going on any quests, nobody's going to be murdered, and there won't be an alien invasion. Maybe a marriage breaks up, or someone loses a job—but that's a trigger, not a story.

And you can't have a character-driven plot where no characters change, because their change is what drives the story on to its end. Someone learn something. The main character may fail to learn, in which case the story is about what this does to everyone else around him. But characters change.

So, in LotR, people come in expecting the same, and except for a few hobbits and one deeply confused shield-maiden, nobody changes in any significant way. It's different from what people are used to, and strikes many people as a defect.

[yovargas]

I wouldn't say 'defect', just less interesting.

[axordil]

Prim--
One of the thing Top Shippey's work made me realize is just how limited, even flawed, that unspoken assumption in pre-war character-based fiction is: as you implied, that drama and conflict are present and significant without quests, murders, or alien invasions. And perhaps they were, for a couple of generations. Until WWI. The writers that came out of the war, I believe, came to understand in a way others did not that once you've been through the Somme, or Verdun, or the Argonne, your standards for what is significant...change.

[Holbytla]

I can see that kind of character might not be too interesting in a movie. But I will never forgive PJ for the cheapening of Aragorn's nobility, nor the miserably nasal whine of Viggo Mortenson's voice, nor the horse kiss, nor the bowing to all 4 hobbits.

Boy this thread brings back memories.

There are so many angles to attack this from, it is hard to restrain myself.

Is this a comparison between book/movie or an analyzation of the character in the book?

Before I go and trounce Viggo and PJ for creating a character not from neddlepoint or crochet, but of stitched together ragged pieces of cloth, I need more direction.

Aragorn is Tolkien's protaganist whether it started out that way or not.
Actually you could argue that Aragorn was the protagonist long before Trotter ever showed up.

A quote from Tolkien himself...

Following the resounding success of The Hobbit in 1938, J.R.R. Tolkien's publisher warned him that "a large public will be clamoring next year to hear more from you about Hobbits." In 1950, Tolkien wrote to his publisher, "My work has escaped from my control, and I have produced a monster . . . it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion."

He did indeed create a literary monster.
He was going in two directions at one time, and one of the results of that is "flat" protagonist.

Tolkien's Aragorn would have been far more evolved had he set out from the start with one goal in mind. Trying to write a sequel to the Hobbit and merge that with the Silmarillion is what caused Aragorn to be the way he was.

What PJ did was to try and create a true protagonist, complete with depth and character evolution.
Whether he succeeded or not is another point of debate.
Lucky for you I will refrain from going off on that tangent.

I still have plenty of leftover rage regarding PJ and Aragorn.

[Primula Baggins]

I am left feeling grateful that Aragorn in the book never particularly mattered to me. He does his thing, great, hurray, who's that chick, oh, I remember, sort of. . . . He does what he's supposed to do, but I'm cut from the wrong cloth to be powerfully affected by him. Deeds without the human connection. Yes, I can rationalize that it's there—I can say, well, if most people went through an experience such as that, they would feel this particular powerful emotion, and I must assume Aragorn did, though there's no particular evidence of it. . . .

But I can't then turn around and be moved by the emotion I've just had to reason out and imagine for myself.

My natural impression is that most things are easy for book Aragorn, and his "moments of weakness" are slight and unremarkable compared to Frodo and Sam in Mordor.

That may just be it, at bottom: I could love book Aragorn more if he weren't sharing book space with (and taking pages and pages away from) two of my favorite literary characters of all time. Two fully rounded characters whose plight and heroism move me every time—always have, for more than thirty-five years now, and I hope always will.

[axordil]

The thing is, B!Aragorn (love the terminology) HAD his story of growth and self-discovery and lessons painfully learned. Bits of it show in Appendix A. But as noted above, by the time of LOTR he's lived a long lifetime of Men, which means he's grown about as much as he's going to. His role in LOTR is necessarily schematic as a result, but that doesn't make him insignificant. It's fairly obvious that his story and Frodo's are complementary on several levels: both are Campbellian in scope and detail, and both are types of Christ (sorry JRRT old boy, but you can't fight your upbringing): one Triumphant, one Suffering.

But let's go back to WWI and the trenches. And now review what is The Central Trope of LOTR, indeed of JRRT's thought: War Solves Nothing. You can't destroy great evil with force, because the application of force is from the get-go, tainted. Even in the midst of WWII, for us the archetypal "Good" war, he held to it.

That doesn't mean war is unnecessary, only ultimately futile except as a holding action. Aragorn, though, unlike most leaders in real life, knows it. And that ties in to the list of his failures Prim ticked off--the nature of the real struggle with evil is that of holding on, dealing with setbacks, accepting what cannot be contested, but never giving up.

That's the key element Aragorn shares with Frodo (and Sam). Not giving up. As I suggested before, it makes them both Christian heroes. But where Aragorn is a figure on a broad well-trodden stage, Frodo is a frightfully modern-seeming figure. His path is that of the Pilgrim, to begin with, but what he endures is not to be found in any historical pilgrim's progress.

But the mirror works both ways. If Frodo and the hobbits pass into the world of High Romance, in which forgotten kings with heirloom swords and fairy lovers are par for the course, so too does he keep some of the mimetic world with him as he goes, and it affects those close to him on his journey, including, perhaps especially, Aragorn.

More to come on that thought. I have to go argue about my house appraisal.